


Between Us

by wordspank



Category: Vampire Diaries (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-02-28
Updated: 2016-03-02
Packaged: 2018-01-14 01:25:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 6,593
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1247512
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wordspank/pseuds/wordspank
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A collection of memories, thoughts, and imagined moments about Klaus and Caroline, past and future.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Maya On Plane (By Alexandre Desplat & The London Symphony Orchestra)

**Author's Note:**

> As the writing for this serves as a companion to music I picked and graphics I created, it'd be better if you hopped on over to wordspank.tumblr.com/tagged/between-us for the full experience.
> 
> This series will be broken down by song tracks and released in that order. Its parts will not be written chronologically. Some of the writing follows canon closely, and some things I’ve taken liberties with. Parts of it are sweet, other bits, violent. I'll change the rating as it goes. A few are drabbles, a couple are full length fic. Hope you enjoy it.

  
_track 01_  
Alexandre Desplat & The London Symphony Orchestra  
"[Maya on Plane](https://app.box.com/s/bwjo4t1wgjdmidbuzfgt)"

 

Arm in arm they walk.

They’re in a space where nobody believes can exist. For they say Klaus is lonely, angry, and a terrible friend to have, caught in his cycle of revenge, reducing himself to a black hole of soul-sucking paranoia and insecurity. They say if he drowns, you descend with him. Everyone keeps telling her that she’s wasting her time trying to fix a broken thing.

But she isn’t trying to. Caroline sees all the pieces in shards and dust, and the only thing she wants to do is trace her fingers through it, feeling like she _knows_ him. When she glimpses the damage, all she sees the outline of her own reflection.

Klaus glances downward, realizing that her hand, in the crook of his elbow, is not quite settled. “Here,” he says, dropping his arm to let her slide her hand into his. It makes her pause for a second, but she allows it, to savour the moment before they part ways, maybe for months. Maybe for years.

So she enjoys the space they share together. _Their space,_ where nothing needs to be said and everything can be _felt._ The quiet energy between them warms, twists, melds. Monster, the world warns her. But it surprises her how comforting he can actually be. _He's her monster._

At the door, she stops holding his hand. What should’ve been a hollow emptiness Klaus has prepared himself for is filled up with light when she turns to him, looks him in the eye and says,

“Thank you,”

like she means it from the bottom of her heart. She doesn’t say anything more, but he can hear the rest of it clear as the night sky they walk under - _for everything_.

Thank you for everything.

Time, life, distance. Separation. The world fails to recognize is that all the things that try to tear them apart only brings them closer together.

He smiles. She returns it with one of her own. Anything else will feel like a goodbye, and neither of them will have that tonight.


	2. Lessons (by SOHN)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I'm struggling; I've given in  
> This time I'll keep an overview  
> This time I'll keep away from you

  
  
track 02  
Sohn  
"[Lessons](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e17iXDf0NGE)"  
[](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e17iXDf0NGE)  
  


_I've tried to stop thinking about you. And I can't._

It runs through her mind, padded by the beat of her heart in her ears.

Again and again. The foreign sound of what he's saying, knowing what it means, but not fully understanding his use of it. There's the _why,_ but more importantly, the _so what?_

Caroline hears it echoing in her ears. She feels something happening as she babbles a reply. Something that never quite goes away even after all's said and done; it lingers like the smell of a person who's slept too many nights in her bed.

There comes a day when she isn't so sure if it's what he really said that bothered her for years - even if it hadn't actually been _him._

They weren't his words after all.

Is it still the same now? She doesn’t know. Sometimes she forgets. On a good day, she goes on without slipping into reminiscence, but it’s only because her mind is _preoccupied_.

Then she finds herself alone, and it starts.

The flit of an image; the lick of sweat off his back; the smell of that coat; the taste of his blood journeying from the corner of her mouth, beneath her ear, to the back of her neck. And his breathing. Just the soft rise and ebb of him, returning life back to her. What was once his became hers.

_I've tried to stop thinking about you. And I can't._

Caroline closes her eyes, bitter. Not because it keeps resurfacing, but because she doesn’t know – because she’ll never know – if she’ll ever hear the words leave his lips again, the same way she doesn’t know how he ended up so deep under her skin.


	3. This Is What It Feels Like (By BANKS)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I hang on everything that you say  
> You know I can see all the things that imply  
> You secretly are in love

  
_track 03_  
BANKS  
"[This Is What It Feels Like](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=naMvm2DUKiE)"

 

 

Paper crunched; black velvet, scratched; silver, tarnished. They tumble from her warm hands into old cardboard.

Caroline dumps it all, and reaches for the lighter.

 

Every single thing that reminds her of him, she digs up. From her drawers, from her wardrobe, off the tiny brass stand sitting on her dresser. There are not as many as she thought, but enough to forge a mosaic of memory that swirls about her insides in chipped and broken pieces. Enough to cause chaos.

They crowd around her on the bed, laid out like a map of his love for her.

Drawings. She lifts a yellowed page, feels her heart respond with a pinch. It takes so little to make her feel worshipped, and she’s disappointed that she loses herself so easily on his pedestal.

It’s just graphite and pulp.

Her fingers bend inwards, taking the corner of the picture with them. She squeezes until her knuckles go white, until the beautifully smudged contour of her own image marks her palm; until she folds in the rest of the paper with both hands pressed together, crushing.

It rolls off her palm into the box. Throws in the rest of the pages.

Nothing about her mood improves.

The velvet box is not as precious. Neither is the bracelet in it, returned to her a day after she’d flung it away from her like it was poison. She keeps telling herself this, as she runs a finger over the jeweled bow shapes, every glitter like refracted sun through crystal tears.

None of this is important. In it goes, into the box.

A dress. Grey tuelle, the encrusted waist. The ghost of his hand upon it makes her smooth a thumb over the fabric, her other hand a clenched fistful of silk fibers. One-time wear, she rationalizes. Dispose.

Last one. It’s in her lap the whole time, the one she almost forgets. Soft, ordinary, she looks at the plain black cotton top and lifts it up closer to her face, knowing exactly where the spot of his blood had fallen. Twenty washes later and she still knows.

It floods her, his vigor, the recollection coiling around her like white smoke, seducing, claiming. He held her. He offered himself. And Caroline bit, as Eve might have had with the serpent watching, knowing what it was like to be truly  _saved_ and at the same time entering a most damning fate _._  It was the only second chance that anyone ever gave her.

A girl never forgets her first.

And this is what makes her hesitate. Her throat tightens and her hand hovers, slow to drape the cotton top over the edge of the box that’s barely half full. He’s in her now - and he will be, long after the memories are nothing but soot and rags.

So Caroline tips over the box and tosses her dainty little zippo aside.

_Do what you will with your scars. You remember their pain all the same._

She buries her face in her pillow, and prays,  _please, stop the longing. I need to move on._


	4. The Fragile (Acoustic) (by Nine Inch Nails)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She reads the minds of all the people as they pass her by  
> Hoping someone can see

__  
  
  
track 04  
Nine Inch Nails  
"[The Fragile (Acoustic)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BOjX975KJNo)"   
  


 

_Mystic Grill._

“They don’t serve what I want.” Caroline flips the menu. “Or maybe,” she scans the full list of assorted drinks to test her liver with. “What would you recommend?”

Stefan leans forward and anchors a finger to the laminated surface without looking. “This one.”

“Bacardi. Vodka. Gin. Tequila. Whiskey. Beer. Stout.” Her brows rise. “Okay. I like variety.”

Three minutes later, an aptly named Graveyard arrives in a frosted mug, black as the blazer she’s wearing. Stefan has water, much to her disdain.

“All about the straightedge, I see,” she quips, but it seems like he isn’t interested in the small talk. “We’re not here to talk about me. We’re here to talk about why you called me down here.” Then he waits for her answer.

She can’t give it. She takes the thin red straw into her mouth and drinks, inhaling deep and long like she would with the bar’s stale air to centre herself. The dark concoction scurries straight into her belly, both hot and nearly spicy despite the column of fracturing ice in the centre of the sweating glass. It’s none as tasty as her regular fruit-garnished tipples of choice, but if it helps loosen her tongue and the iron cage of her heart, she’ll have it by the jug.

Locking his fingers together in front of him, Stefan attempts another emotional breach. “Are you okay?” he asks.

_Just say what you feel. No, not really, but yes, I’m still standing. On the flat of my shoulders sit a burden, something - no, someone - that has spent the years digging claws into my temples, so severe that even the ghost of his shadow still ripples through bone and blood. Yet here I am. Carrying it with my head barely above the water._

"I don’t know," Caroline says. She knows very well that he can’t help her if she doesn’t tell him where it hurts. (Everywhere, probably.)

Stefan leans back into his seat, quiet. He eyes her as he allows her reply to steep and take hold. Then the waitress crosses their table, and he stops her with a lift of his wrist.

"Get me a Graveyard," he says, keeping his gaze on Caroline. "And a bottle of vodka for my friend."

The blonde lowers her head and sips. Sips again, so that maybe each time she fuels up on liquid courage the truth will come by more easily. But it never comes, and the two vampires continue to sit, littering their booth with bottles until dawn cracks the sky, talking about everything except what she asked him to be here for.

 

 

 

_Salvatore Residence._

This is hardly her favourite place to be.

"What do you want?"

A Salvatore brother she’d prefer to see less of, clutches his usual glass of whiskey. No Elena, no niceties. The true visage of Damon, the one that Caroline is most comfortable with. She has all the freedom to deck his smug face in whenever she deems it appropriate.

"Your girlfriend says that I have to iron out my issues with you," she replies, with some resignation in her voice.  _Because I care about what she feels.  
_

The icy blue irises light up at her disdain. He’s probably going to ask her why she isn’t already laying prone on the floor and crawling toward him.

"I’m surprised you even came."

Caroline folds her arms, her entire body instinctively wanting to keel over and shield itself away from anything remotely Damon-related.

"I’m not apologizing, and I’m not going to forgive you." Those two things will never happen and it’s important that she gets it out of the way first. "Elena wants me to be civil, so I’m being civil. I won’t put your crappy personality under a microscope if you stop pretending that I don’t have a right to hate you."

She realises how cold she sounds when her voice clips the end of her sentence, but she reminds herself that he doesn’t deserve anything softer.

Unaffected by the poison in her tone, he lifts his head, casting a downward glance where the shade of his lashes hides the hypnotising glimmer of his eyes. He says nothing - a cue that they’ve reached a mutual understanding and she can go back to her life where he holds no value except for being a person that Elena loves.

Caroline spins on her heel, but her exit is interrupted by the sound of his late response.

"You know how there’s always that one part of you that just never changes? The part you try to bury so deep that you trick yourself into thinking it’s gone until you’re at the end of your rope, and suddenly it comes back to bite everyone in the ass?" I know, she frowns, but remains quiet, not quite getting the relevance of his ramble.

"And there’s this  _one person_  who knows exactly how your ugly little demon self looks like, whether or not you think you’ve found the path to,” Damon tips the glass up and sips, “betterment.” Then he smirks at his own dubious use of the word, with slight laziness on the enunciation. “The one person who knows what you really are.”

She turns around, but he already has his back facing her. Not brave enough to let her see what his face might reveal.

"My one person isn’t Elena."

She shakes her head and keeps the bitter laugh holed up in her chest. He’s just drunk, she tells herself, drunk on all his regrets and the bloody memories he has little time and place to revisit with a fond sharp-toothed grin because everyone has some sort of stock in his rehabilitation. (Everyone but her.)

He knows well that he’s not going to receive a shred of sympathy, so Caroline isn’t sure why he chose to divulge what he did. But long after she’s left, the last sliver of his natter has found its way into her heart like a splinter.

 _My one person._  The thought travels through her like a shudder, tremulous and quick.  _He isn’t here._

 

 

 

_Whitmore College: Omega Delta Phi._

She picks someone to spend a night with.

He’s standing about in a smattering of cliques belonging to the frat house. The black wayfarer shape of his glasses is interesting, but it’s not what catches her eye - it’s his mouth.

His lips are full, so naturally colored that he looks like he could give the perfect kiss. They look all too familiar for her to resist.

 _They are a marvel,_  she thinks, as she nips his bottom lip and tightens her hold on his dark blonde hair. He moans into her, hot and needy with fumbling hands.  _The only thing missing,_ she notes while removing the frames from his face, almost discontent,  _is that stupid accent._

Caroline stops him from moving straight into intercourse, offering a playful lick against his pout. “Not yet.”

She pulls her shoulders back and he cranes his neck to eagerly take her nipple into his mouth, tongue gently circling - just as she’d imagine he might. Just as, she imagines,  _he did_.

There’s no better time to feed her fantasy.

Her hand guides his to the crease of her thigh. “Yes,” her hiss cuts through the air of his room, as his thumb follows a path to her soft folds. He relishes attention on her other breast and she sighs when he rubs down, fingers using her wetness to create the much-needed glide over her clit - keep going, she encourages, squeezing her eyes shut so her mind starts to see, same shade of mouth and colour of hair, as the tip of his nose nuzzles the apex of her thigh.

 _Klaus._  She sees Klaus.

And she still sees him when her eyes are opened again, tongue laving, his middle finger working a fresh flood of desire from her until she feels her walls tighten.

The way his pupils flash a ring of yellow is what adds fire to her blood - oh god, she sits up now, legs responding on their own while he’s still dragging his tongue about her in mad patterns - Klaus, her chest heaves the silent prayer, imploding.

"Don’t. Stop," she bucks, even though her body begs for pause. Because he wouldn’t. He wouldn’t let her stop him from sating his lust with so little time between her legs.

The groan rumbles against her thigh in submission, rattling the very centre of her. He plunges his tongue into her cunt, pinning her hips down with both hands, her knees hooked over the domes of his shoulders. She throws her head back to savour his enthusiasm.

That’s more like it.

She sobs her pleasure out loud for the second time, her feet becoming tense arches as he slides a calming hand over her and plants a casual kiss on her stomach. Caroline, shaking, asks him again to resume, because no,  _he_  will not be done so easily. Klaus will keep going - because he  _did_  keep going - until she can only sound out brusque vowels with the delicate O of her petal lips and he’s had his fill of her.

His brow furrows, perplexed about the request, but she baits him with dirty promises, that it’ll be worth his while. He has to just keep pressing his bruised plum of a mouth to her wet centre and  _please please her_ , just one more time, so that she can watch him make her come. (Watch…  _him_ , with his lips glistening and dark, and his gold-black eyes staring straight back at her when she surrenders to him.)

Her partner blinks once, twice, tempted, looking downward to think as his hand starts its own path to her hip, then looks back up where he suddenly finds his gaze locked on to hers, unable to tear away.

“Tell me what you think,” Caroline purrs, a knife of guilt twisting in her gut at the unsteady pins of his pupils. “Do you want to?”

He will say yes, because he’s not dark enough; too innocent, much too  _stable_  for her tastes. His touch isn’t a malevolent force that will rip her to shreds. He won’t be able to pull the darkness from her soul and weave it into his own. He does not infect her the way the vile emotional spores of Klaus and his mangled intentions both suffocate and send her careening off the precipice of monsterhood.

But Klaus is not here, so this boy will have to do. All she needs is to look at his mouth, and her heart will do the rest of the thinking for her.


	5. Falling Short (by Låpsley)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's been a long time comin'  
> But I'm falling short

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A great big thank you to Melissa/@goldcaught for giving this a once-over super long ago. I’m finally posting it after 84 years.

 

track 05  
Låpsley  
"[Falling Short](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eanYE0_-Ngo)"

 

 

The first one is Tyler. Not Lockwood; she knows better than that. A different one, a human. Black hair, prominent lines that crack the corners of his eyes when he laughs. Sports a five o’clock shadow at all times, which he may be keeping to avoid looking prepubescent. He makes her smile a good amount. Has his arm around her most of the time when they’re out together, walking side by side.

Klaus has never had that luxury.

They break up because she feels like he’s around her too much. She wants space to discover, explore, _graduate,_ and she can’t do that when he’s breathing down her neck all the time about where she’s going or who she’s with.

 

 

The second is Andrew. Babyfaced; cherubic. The apples of his cheeks warm up and take on a mottled pink whenever she makes him feel embarrassed or excited, or when he’s caught in a little white lie. He is the first of her boyfriends to smoke, and as much as she’d rather not have the smell of cigarettes trapped in her hair when she meets other people, she doesn’t once complain about it. But he notices everything about her, from when she gets fresh highlights to when she decides to have smoked salmon instead of chicken in her salad. He slaps on a nicotine patch just for her, so she doesn’t have to hesitate when he leans in for a kiss.

Not enough people compromise for her.

Unfortunately, he keeps bringing it up whenever they argue, like it’s some grand magnanimous act of sacrifice, so they split. On bad terms. She buys fish to leave in the vents, nooks and crannies of his apartment, and sloshes the remainder of bloody heads, tails and guts across what was once the bed they shared before she departs forever.

 

 

Guy three is Daniel. Built like a professional athlete. They recognize each other from the few times they’ve shook hands during Tyler number two’s birthdays. He reminds her a little of Jesse, which is probably what draws her to him in the first place, but she’s careful to establish very early on that she wants to keep it extremely casual. Meaning just _sex._ Caroline gets exactly what she wants, and is immensely satisfied.

At least she’s happy, Klaus notes.

Their arrangement is put on hold when she finds out that she’s gotten into graduate school.

 

 

She’s too busy for a serious relationship, that is, until she discovers that one of the faculty members is also a vampire. It’s been so long since she’s met anyone who can share her love of a cold B negative, so she goes over and they OD on blood-gourmet _everything_ that Alisha can finish making within a reasonable amount of time. It’s in the consomme, the steak sauce, the flan, and - why the hell not - in the wine, and by the time they’re done, Caroline is barefoot on the couch singing God Bless The Child like she’s on season hundred-whatever-the-fuck of America’s Got Talent.

Klaus understands that a friendship can be a serious relationship too.

Alisha tells Caroline about how she ended up as a Professor of Philosophy and how she can only ever remain so for a couple more years before people start talking about her eternal youth. It makes Caroline realise that she’s going to have to shed her identity many, many times if she wants people to focus on her work and not on the mystery of why she never looks a day over twenty when she’s supposed to be sixty.

But what if she wants to stay Caroline Forbes forever?

It’s alright. She’ll always be Caroline Forbes to Klaus.

She drops out of the program and decides to work at a juice bar so she can think about practical career alternatives for young and ambitious vampires such as herself. The decision also inconveniences their friendship, and they move on from each other, much to Caroline’s disappointment.

 

 

Shortly after entering the world of juice, she meets a cute warlock. Caroline tries not to make a joke about liquid diets, but even in successfully doing so, they don’t last. Klaus knows because she texts him a burst of uppercase letters

**I HATE MAGIC**

to which he simply texts back,

**The magic, or the man?**

She doesn’t reply.

 

 

This is her third Tyler. Third sodding Tyler.

And this one lasts the longest. So long that Klaus scrolls through all her texts, walls of run-on sentence complaints, short broken phrases that hint to him about all these people she’s been with but never left a real impression on her, and he notices that it’s been roughly four years since she last sent him anything.

He rolls his shoulders back, and thin, genteel hands slide over them, squeezing. Klaus places his phone facedown on his desk, pensive. Even as he bites down into the wrist bared to him, he thinks of Caroline, not thinking of him - not for one moment.

It stings.

Still, if ever there was a time to prove to her that his selflessness exists, this would be it. _As long as she’s happy_ , he reminds himself.

As long as she is happy.

 

 

Finally, a text.

They sit at a cafe. She still doesn’t want to step into New Orleans, so this is the point that’s halfway between them; a little location that prides itself in serving artisanal chocolates and dainty desserts with decorated spoons. It’s a bit of a nowhere on the map, but Klaus doesn’t mind. He gets to be in daylight with her again, watching her stir her drink in endless circles as she tells him about where she wants to go and who she wants to be. Not a word about _Tyler 3_ ; it’s a good feeling.

He listens to her carefully and smiles. Caroline, the always moving, constant in her restlessness, with dreams as big as her heart. She picks him to be in this moment with her and that warms him more than the sun on his face.

“How do you get over it?” she asks. Under the table, the tip of her sandal presses gently into his shin. He can tell it’s completely accidental because she doesn’t realize that she’s doing it, but he lets her keep it there anyway. Klaus misses her touch. Gentle brush, unintentional caress – he’ll take them all.

“Get over what?”

“Chasing things.”

She’s starting to feel it, he observes. Her immortality.

“Who says I ever stopped?” And he looks at her pointedly, which turns her glance down into her cup. A hint of a smile teases at the corner of her lips.

She suppresses it with a mild shake of her head. “One day, I’m going to finish doing everything I ever wanted. Check every box on my bucket list. How do you deal with having nothing else to work towards?”

Klaus leans over, tempted to take her hand in his, but she’s not looking for comfort. She’s looking for truth, so he locks his fingers together in front of him. “You’ll always have something to work towards. But you’ll also grow to enjoy what you have in the present.” He pauses. “You taught me that, you know.”

Caroline gives him a tiny smile, but this one is more mysterious.

 

 

He offers to walk her back to the hotel she’s staying at.

People usually stop at the door, but they’re different. He follows her all the way into her room like it’s theirs, like they’d arrived here together. She doesn’t mind. Caroline kicks off her shoes, huffing in relief, dropping her purse onto the end table by her bed. She looks like she’s about to turn in, so Klaus takes his leave.

“Where are you going?” she says, and doesn’t even wait for him to finish turning back around before she pulls the layers of clothes over her head all at once. She lunges, pressing hands to his chest and his arm, and pushes him hard enough to bump the back of his head against the door. He laughs; she kisses.

He’d always imagined that there would a big, dramatic moment that would lead up to this. Like the last time. But no one really _needs_ those, do they? This is good too. It means that she’s been thinking about him. Him, on her mind. Remembering him, and wanting _him_.

The thought runs a tight thrill up his spine, and Klaus slides down her body, pulling at whatever that still remains on her with eager hands. He drapes her thigh over his shoulder, looks up at her equally hungry eyes and buries his nose between her legs, tasting Caroline with his tongue, licking her clit into his mouth, and missing Caroline with his hybrid heart, beating and bruising beneath his ribcage.

He misses her so much that he feels almost sore when he leaves her bed.

But the next day, she tells him to come back.

That’s when he becomes Seven; Klaus is number Seven.

 

 

Unfortunately, there is an eight.

Klaus knows nothing about it because she’s still angry, so angry at him. Sometimes a small thread of fear gets caught in his throat at the possibility that she may ice him out forever. Her unspoken insistence that he couldn’t so much as accidentally wink at someone else had always gotten on his nerves – they’re vampires, they should explore, and expand their views, learn more of the alternate ways of living.

It’s not that they _needed_ the extra pair of hands. The girl he gave her was for _her,_ and perhaps his mistake had been that he’d picked a stranger whose manner had been a bit too forward and aggressive for Caroline to trust. He’d just wanted to show her more, but he’d misjudged her readiness.

But it wasn’t that she wasn’t ready at all.

“I’m not… _like that_ ,” she had said, very coldly, looking incredibly insulted and hurt about the whole thing.

~~I’m not that kind of person. I don’t like having threesomes.~~

~~I’m not that kind of person. I don’t share.~~

~~I’m not that kind of person. I can’t handle seeing you with someone else.~~

~~I’m not that kind of person. I don’t want to be with anyone else.~~

~~I’m not that kind of person. I don’t have to prove anything.~~

~~I’m not that kind of person. Why do I have to _be open minded?_~~

~~I’m not that kind of person. _Am I not enough for you?_~~

I’m not that kind of person.

He doesn’t actually hear what it means until he replays it in his head for the umpteenth time.

Still feels like a stupid fucking idiot every time he thinks about it.

By the time he’s resolved to make it up to her, she’s already left seven years of their union to the wind, because Klaus, Klaus and his stupid idea of what would make her a wonderful vampire, wanting things for her, ushering her into the vampire life he lived before, completely forgot that nobody made Caroline _fit into anything_ she didn’t want to.

He knew they were lost when he’d seen her put her head on the shoulder of another. That wasn’t even the eighth.

She does that to him. Makes him feel his mistakes. Pulls that little string in his throat until he chokes and goes blue with regret.

Well, that’s not good enough to remove him completely. He isn’t just going to be number seven to her. He said he would be her bloody last.

 

 

He is also ten.

They segue into a friendship after the end of eleven, because she’s gone into a sort of _passion hibernation_ , she calls it. Relationships are fatiguing, she explains, and she just needs someone to talk to while she waits for the weariness to pass.

“I miss what we had,” she says, of the times that Klaus had been there for her in that capacity. Specifically, from one to five.

The idea that Klaus could be friends with Caroline is completely ludicrous to him, of course. When he looks at her, he sees a version of completion for himself that’s changeless, permanent; he’s tasted her, wrapped himself around her; she makes him powerless, and she makes him strong; Caroline, jammed into him like shrapnel holding his life together, that he can’t pick out or he’ll _bleed out_.

It’s only because he loves her that he says yes. But it doesn’t mean that he thinks they’re  _friends._

 

 

Texting, lots of texting. Lots of lunches, and dinners, and restrained physical contact.

Some days she makes it blatantly clear that he’s strictly being engaged to be a confidante and nothing more. To only listen to every complaint about a first date gone wrong (and there are _many_ ). Other days, she lapses into mild flirtation, grazes his leg, talks to him about how she likes her calves getting rubbed like he used to do for her. _You were really good with your hands._

It annoys him because he knows it comes from a different place that she’ll never admit to thinking about. There is, however, a sort of permanence he’s gained in her life. That’s probably one of the few good things he’s gleaned from this emotional shitstorm.

 

 

How does Klaus know that she’s reached the apex of her denial?

He shakes the hand of the man that reminds him of himself.

He looks nothing like Klaus – dark hair, square jaw, more… compact. But his voice is dense with an accent - not quite like his own, but a European one, nonetheless - and he struts around with a confident swagger, like he owns a little bit of the world that remains _only his_. Klaus knows the feeling. It comes with having Caroline on your arm.

Not that he’s seen her arm slung through this fellow’s at all. He often spies the space between them and wonders why they never close the gap.

There had been a time when Klaus spent most of his time with her that way, being close, being not close enough, suspended, swinging back and forth in a will-she-won’t-he manner of things. And then when he _did_ touch her, he could not stop, finding reasons, excuses, _thank you_ s that hadn’t required him to keep her hand between his own, didn’t need him to hold her by the shoulders to deliver a snide remark, nor was there a necessity for him to reach forth and tuck the long lock of her fringe behind her ear when he imparted wisdom to her.

Never knew how to stop it. Especially when she touched back.

Klaus isn’t even discreet about asking her who this new person reminds her of. Cultured vampire with an appreciation for theatre? Likes whiskey more than wine?

Caroline refuses to answer.

“You’re not even trying,” he says, tongue loosened after he’s plied with enough alcohol. Klaus lifts his hand to press the back of a bent finger to her cheek, a gesture that she _knows_ he uses when he wants to be romantic. She pulls back and gives him a quick swat, because they’re supposed to be _friends_ , and friends don’t do that, not even in private restaurant booths. Maybe she’s regretting letting him sit next to her.

They’re waiting on the other _him_ so they can resume casually drinking, but he’s running low on patience for forced small talk and has half a mind to walk away from this completely. Klaus isn’t sure why this dynamic is being pushed-

Right, that frail notion of friendship. He’s growing tired of remembering.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“I don’t believe you.” He swirls, sips, and hides his smile behind his glass. “About him. The carbon copy.” He finds his gaze drawn to her lips. “Do you think of me when you kiss him?”

She tries to give him a deadly glower, but the side of her thumb is rubbing the rim of her cup, agitated. Like she can’t concentrate.

“You don’t have to, love,” he slips a hand over her bare knee underneath the table. Her mouth opens in a little controlled gasp; she feels tense against his palm, warming up when he slides higher, slowly, ever _so slowly,_ as he leans in close, into the curve of her ear and says, “You can come straight to me.”

It rips through him, memories, of Caroline’s fingers twisting in his hair. He knows the full plethora of sounds she makes when he presses into her with his fingers, the kind of scratch she can mar his arms with as he sinks into her. The way she breathes _fuck, oh yes,_ when he does everything right, when his whole body is numb with the pleasure of her, and she winds his necklaces around her hand and tugs her toward him until they cut into her skin.

It’s the sort of thing you never forget, that you don’t just put aside and pretend it’s never altered you on a molecular level. How his particles shifted when he felt _love_ through her lips and in her arms; what a grand lie it would be, to think that they could shelf history so casually and be nothing more than friends.

And Caroline probably knows it too, from what little action she’s taking to stop him.

He pulls back to look at her. Klaus finds it extremely tempting to nudge her panties aside and reacquaint himself. It’d be perfect, the public setting. The danger thrills her, and he loves how quiet she would have to be as he turns her into a hot mess of bitten lips and wet thighs. It would be challenging fun to do it before beta-Klaus returns.

But he doesn’t resume. She can carry on this silly farce with that hollow third-rate sham, or she can come back to him, _really_ come back to him. To hell with this friendship cover.

She’s a big girl. He’ll let her decide what she wants to do.

“I’m headed back. Tell-” well, he can’t even remember the name of the sod, “-him, that I’m sorry I can’t stay.” Klaus tucks a generous amount of bills under his glass and slips out of the booth. “You know where to find me.”

 

 

He gets radio silence for about a week and a half, but she turns up. (Thank god she turns up, because he’s _weak_ when he gives her all that space.) Caroline turns up and yells at him for being a destroyer, and he yells at her for leaving him in equal ruin.

Denial, denial, denial. It’s all denial until he drops a big one.

_Do you not love me?_

That’s the most tender part of him right there, laid out for her to trample upon if she so wishes.

There is a very, very long pause before she replies. _I do._

Then why is she not _with_ him?

She doesn’t know. _I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know._ Caroline paces around the room with her heels of her hands pressed to her temples.

They’ve done this before. If they do it again, they’ll fall into the same pattern, make the same mistakes, be hurt over and over and over again, and boy, love can’t possibly be made to be so painful, and red, and terrifying. These are the reasons that she gives him, her voice hoarse from all the shouting.

The question is, he steps closer and closer to her, does she want to be _with him_?

Yes, she does.

Then just _be with him._

Klaus takes her hand and holds it against the scratch of his beard.

_Just…_

_Be._

 

 

Sixty eight. Lionel.

That sort of name is owed a beating (which Caroline specifically bans).

He’s of a height. Taller than Caroline, and she already stands towering over many people with her practical pumps on. Maintains a short, trendy-looking beard. The feature that would keep her most interested is the definition of his arms - he has that one vein running through the length of his forearm that _maybebutnobodycanbeabsolutelysure_ Klaus can’t compete with.

Lionel likes her. He’s always gnawing on the corner of his lip and glancing down abashedly when she turns on her charm. You know her look; the dip of her head, when she looks up at you through the quick flit of lashes. And then she smiles, just a little bit, and you’re done. You find yourself ensnared; you’d do anything to see the whole glory of it, to maybe hear her laugh spark in your ears and have the contentment fill your chest.

She’s good at that, making you feel like you’re the only one that counts in a room full of people.

Lionel is bad at resisting it, just like Klaus is. He doles out the biggest discount ever given to anyone on the wines, absorbs the cost for her in secret, and always drags a hand through his sandy blonde hair when he delivers the purchase order to her in person.

Oh yes. He _really_ likes her.

Caroline informs Klaus that her supplier’s asked her out. He gives her free booze, she rationalizes.

Klaus tenses. “Are you going to say yes?”

She pauses, then moves closer to him, both hands threading through his. “What do you think?”

He thinks she likes to keep him on his toes by dangling the prospect of her going on dates with people that aren’t him. “I might tear his throat out.”

“Can’t we negotiate? Because… free wine.” She laughs when his fingers grasp harder and uses the weight of his body to move her toward the couch; _he_ gets to hear her laugh, and watch her grin as she tries to be on top of him (of course he lets her be on top of everything). He gets to kiss her knowing that it’s been sixty eight people, and she still picks Klaus every time.

_Last._

It feels so good to be last.

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt #101: Music


End file.
